


all this, and love too, will ruin us

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [88]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Consent Issues, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Memory Loss, Morning After, One Night Stands, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:30:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: Rey is awake to watch the sunrise. It’s a sad, diluted thing, the first rays of daylight spilling through the clouds to bathe her in the soft grey light of dawn. She is in a bed, sheets curled around her waist, the shadows growing around her like a bloodstain. An unfamiliar cat sleeps curled across her ankles.There’s a man asleep on his belly beside her - broad, pale shoulders and a spill of dark hair across the pillows.She knows him. Will always know him. But to her, now, he is a stranger.





	all this, and love too, will ruin us

**Author's Note:**

> Day 29 of October. Prompts were: black cat, melancholy, shadows, bloodstain, ancestor, daylight, and in the clouds. This is possibly straddling the line of dub-con since neither party remembers what happened the night before. No alcohol was involved, and the sex was definitely consensual, but since it isn't elaborated on in the fic exactly what happened, the discomfort of waking up with a stranger without remembering the night before can definitely read as dubious. So you know. Be careful.
> 
> Title is from Richard Siken's, _Crush._ Song listened to on repeat while writing was Max Richter's, [Sarajevo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTvhR0lEtZM) And if you want to find those two lovely things smooshed together, you can find them in [this seven year old Supernatural fanvid.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CB9-21IWiQ)

Rey is awake to watch the sunrise. It’s a sad, diluted thing, the first rays of daylight spilling through the clouds to bathe her in the soft grey light of dawn. She is in a bed, sheets curled around her waist, the shadows growing around her like a bloodstain. An unfamiliar cat sleeps curled across her ankles.

There’s a man asleep on his belly beside her - broad, pale shoulders and a spill of dark hair across the pillows.

She knows him. Will always know him. But to her, now, he is a stranger.

He stirs, legs moving sluggishly against hers as he frowns and comes awake, still smacking his lips. He rolls over, lashes fluttering open and revealing eyes as dark as his hair, dark as the shadows.

“Oh,” he says, looking at her.

“Oh,” she echoes back, soft.

Her heart knows this man, even if her eyes look at him and see a stranger. Looking at him, she sees an echo of that knowing in his gaze. His heart knows hers too.

“I-” he says. “-We?”

“Yes,” she says. “_We_.”

When he stands, she does not shy away from his nakedness. Why should she? She can feel the ache of what they did between her legs, in the strain of her thighs. Knows that even if her brain can’t remember, her body will remember for her.

She hadn’t been drinking, so there is no reason for the gaping hole in her memory. It’s just gone, ripped away from her, like something had reached inside of her and scooped it out. He frowns as he gathers up his clothes, sliding into a pair of slim black pants. He hesitates, looking at her. There is confusion there, and she wonders if he is reaching for the same memory that she is, if it too refuses to come when he beckons.

“I’m Ben,” he tells her, and that seems… right.

“Rey,” she replies, looking at the cat sleeping at her feet. It is small and black, still slim and gawky with the remnants of kittenhood. Its pointed toes stretch when it sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I don’t remember-”

She smiles. “Nor do I.”

He blinks, startled. “I don’t think I was-”

“Drinking?” she finishes, raising an eyebrow. “I wasn’t either.”

His eyes remain locked to hers for a moment, and then they shift, sweeping down her body. His gaze feels like paint, spreading warm and sticky on her skin, over the tanned skin of her collarbones, down the curve of her breasts, and lower still, where the sheets hide the rest.

“Strange,” he says, and she feels the urge to echo him again.

Yes, _strange._

“Do I know you?” he asks, and there it is- that pull again. Because surely, surely she knows him.

He is in her bones, her heart, her blood, and she’s never believed in reincarnation, never believed in that mumbo jumbo of alternate realities or parallel universes, but some version of her knows him. She is sure of it. Some distant ancestor sat with this man beside her. Touched her hands to his in the dark. Felt fire on her skin and rainwater on her cheeks, and felt all of that with him.

“I don’t think so,” she says, but it feels like a lie. “I’ve never met you before, but you feel-”

“Familiar?” he echoes.

She nods, helplessly, twisting the sheets in her hands.

“Can you hand me my clothes?” she asks in a small voice.

He doesn’t watch her put them on, and she’s grateful for that. The insides of her thighs are sore and she feels bruised between them. It would be a good feeling, she thinks, if she could remember the sex itself. Without the memory though, she feels vulnerable. She looks at him and sees her type, can envision herself approaching him at a bar or a club, asking him to dance, asking to go somewhere quieter.

But she doesn’t _know_. She’s never woken up next to someone that she doesn’t know before. She’s woken up to strangers in her bed before, but there have always been some dim echo of meeting them the night before.

She can see the same discomfort on him, in the rigid way he holds himself, carefully not looking at her.

“You can turn around now,” she tells him once she’s dressed.

He’s slow to do so, jaw tightening as his eyes skate down her frame once again. Her dress is rumpled, and the zipper is torn at the back, but with it on, she feels almost normal again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have-”

She shrugs. “It’s all right. I’m sure that we had fun together. It’s not your fault that I can’t remember.”

Unless it was, of course, but somehow, she isn’t getting that sort of feeling from him. You can fake a lot of things, but that level of frustrated uncertainty was not one of them.

He hesitates, and she does too, standing there with the morning light spilling in around their legs. The cat on the bed stretches, yawning, and slowly comes awake. The moment is strange and awkward, but she still can’t quite shake that feeling.

“I do know you,” she says, raising her chin defiantly. “We haven’t met before, but I _know y_ou.”

She reaches, her mind straining with the effort, and comes away with a flash of brightly lit swords, their hands stretched across a fire, and a strange, soft snowfall. And then it is gone, and her head aches.

He is still looking at her. His eyes are shadowed with a distant melancholy, as if he too is straining to remember. Somehow, whoever they were to each other in that other life, she has a feeling that it hadn’t ended happily.

This is the moment where she should leave. She should find her handbag and shoes and leave this place, with the sad-eyed boy she only half remembers. But she doesn’t. She is still there, hesitating.

“I think we should get a coffee,” she hears herself say.

He nods, slowly. “Breakfast.”

“Breakfast, yes,” Rey agrees. “We can discuss-” she gestures between them “-all this.”

They spend another moment looking at one another. She wants to touch his freckles, wants to map them across his skin like starlight. Wants to see if she can find the memory of last night on his body, in the cradle of his hips and the softness of his thighs. But mostly, she wants to talk. Wants to _know_, the way her heart insists it does.

“Let me get my keys,” he tells her.


End file.
